What I think it means to be alive.

Do other people understand what I do by reality, and being awake, and experiencing? I know some do, but they seem few. It's like the Oscar Wilde quote - 'Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life a mimicry, their passions a quotation.' Maybe other people just don't talk about it in the way I feel compelled to. That is why I want to make more of those quotations than just posting them here without interrogation. They are there to try to interpret my 'passions', but they fall so short.

By reality and being awake and experiencing, I mean living not existing. Living is about honesty. About feeling. About noticing. It is not about 'pastimes', which is a turn of phrase illustrative of a way of thinking I don't like. Nothing in real living is undertaken 'just to pass the time'. Time is incredibly precious, and not to be squandered on things that are not worth every second it takes to complete them. Complex value. Real life is about being switched on to the surroundings, poking your head above the crowd. Seeing the architecture above the glitzy shop fronts. Hearing the wind or the birds in the cities. A violin from a 4th floor window. People having sex in a field as the train goes past. Living is about living like a child, where the world is still raw and everything is interesting and new and equally fascinating. It is about thinking just a little bit further than the next pay check or the next task. It asks why? of everything. The answer is never 'because'. That is one of the biggest lies-to-children that adults perpetuate. Even if the answer is unknown, it can be a story, or a dream, or an idea. It tells children to accept that there are things that they are not to examine and try to comprehend. It quashes imagination.

Living is painful. Which is why we, I, shut it off. The painful parts, honestly experienced, are nearly more than we can bear. Feeling properly, it seems we cry every tear in our bodies and then some more. Ever cried so much you've been sick? But the flip side of that is that when living is beautiful and perfect, you get to experience the incredible buzz. High on life. Really high. Where everything becomes brighter and purer and clearer and just breathing can be exciting. When every sense is enhanced. You have to take the highs and the lows. And know that that is reality. The fog in which most people seem to pass their lives is not real.